Good news from teen America

While we're wringing our hands over Littleton, evidence of a sharp decline in teen birthrates, especially among blacks, shows that adults can make a difference

By Joan Walsh

Apr 30, 1999 | As the nation agonizes over what's wrong with American teenagers in the wake of the Littleton massacre, it would be easy to miss a slice of extraordinary good news that emerged Thursday from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). For the fifth year in a row, the teen birthrate has declined, more than 16 percent over the past six years.

The drop is even more striking among African-American teens. The birthrate for black teens declined by a quarter between 1991 and 1997, the last full year for which data is available. Abortion rates have declined for all groups, meaning that girls have been able to prevent pregnancies, not just terminate more of them.

Many people will squabble over who deserves credit. From Jane Fonda to Gary Bauer, celebrities, ideologues and activists on both the left and right labeled teen pregnancy one of the nation's biggest problems in the late 1980s. On the right, programs preached abstinence, while public health advocates lobbied for, and won, higher spending on health education and contraception. Although the teen birthrate decline has been evident for several years, there wasn't sufficient data to indicate which approach was correct.

Now there is, and the answer will satisfy both sides. Teens are both postponing sex and using birth control, more often and more reliably. But behind the dry data is a message with resonance in the wake of Littleton: Teens respond sensibly when adults reach out and give them information and support to make responsible decisions. What's been learned about sex can potentially be applied to youth violence, and the epidemic of alienation that's behind it.

Remarkably, AGI's latest study was able to measure which approach made a difference, and how much. "About 20 percent of the decrease since the late 1980s is because of decreased sexual activity, and 80 percent of the decrease is because of more effective contraceptive practice," says Dr. Jacqueline Derroch, AGI vice president.

But there are striking racial differences in the data. Young black women, who saw the steepest decline, are most likely to use Norplant, the contraceptive implant, or injectable Depo-Provera. About a quarter of the sexually active black girls studied used one of those two methods, compared to 9 percent of whites.

"That's the really big change," says Derroch. "We're seeing small but significant declines in sexual activity. But the big news is the use of these long-acting methods."

Of course, black girls don't just magically get injected or implanted with contraceptives. It takes programs to provide new contraceptives, and girls with the sense to use them. Since the late 1980s there's been a crusade to reach out to teens and prevent teen pregnancy in the black community, and it has paid off, in sharply lower rates not only of pregnancy, but infant mortality, school failure, youth violence and welfare dependency.

Next Page: "It's not cool to have a baby anymore"

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